Melting Icebergs etc = Sea level rises.?

Question

When I get in a bath, the water rises because i have filled up a certain area of the bath. Icebergs are 80% underwater and 20% above water (if i remember correctly). When water freezes it expands. So can someone tell me how the sea level will rise enough to flood the US east coast etc? I don't understand how,not that I'm trying to say its wrong, I jsut don't get it if these laws are in place?

Answer 1

Dear Sir:

Yes, you have all the facts correct in your mind...

What I see that you haven't got a good grip on is the
size of the problem.

The glaciers that the scientists are talking about extend for hundreds and hundreds of miles, and they are solid ice. They are presently sitting on solid ground and moving towards the water in a slow march, maybe 5 feet per day. These huge masses of ice are hundreds of feet high. So, the water they contain is just a massive amount of liquid when it melts. The terms gallons or liters is not applied to liquid in that huge of a mass. Terms like cubic miles is probably more appropriate. So when you talk about adding 2,000,000 cubic miles of water to the seas, some real changes in water level will probably result.

In the USA, a lot of homes and businesses are located at places where the elevation above the current sea level marks are only 1 to 3 feet. High winds or storm surges could endanger places even higher up than that. In the area around New Orleans, La., the city is actually below sea level and is dry only because of a huge system of dikes that actually failed in a recent hurricane. As a result the city of New Orleans and much of the surrounding towns went under water. Rebuilding, Clean-up, and repopulation could only begin after the waters receeded to their normal levels and the dikes were repaired, pumps placed back into service to clear out water behind the dikes, etc.

What the scientists are suggesting is that in the future these flood waters might not receed...they will just stay there, and the flooded areas will stay flooded from now on...WOW. That is a doozie to think about.

Answer 2

Your understanding of basic ice/water relations is right. As other people have already said (and I'm just saying because I know it too and want the points!), the problem is with the amount of ice which is not in the sea. The arctic and the antarctic have large volumes of ice sitting on land. If this melts, it will then run off the land and into the sea, increasing the amount of water in the sea.

One interesting point to make is that this means that cooling the Earth down after heating it up won't solve the problem, as the water won't return to above land, and will turn to icebergs. Your knowledge shows that that will increase the sea levels even further!

Answer 3

This depends on how you look at things! When you fill your glass do you make room for the ice cubes? In which case even if they melt it will fill the glass to the top anyway as you have accounted for the displaced the amount of ice when you first filled it. Its pretty much the same principle for the icecaps. The world has a fixed amount of water and goes through a series of cycles of warming and cooling. When the last (cooling) ice age hit a lot of the water was trapped in the form of ice in either poles of the hemisphere. Therefore land was exposed and bridged a lot of the gaps betweens islands (which were once filled with water) and hence why certain organisms were allowed to cross from country to country and settlements started to appear around the newly-forming coastlines. In the present climate the ice is melting (heating) and therefore these land bridges are diminishing as the trapped water in the ice return as water to the ocean. A lot of land has been lost through this way and a lot of civilisation has also been lost through tragic breach of sea defences. Holland is in dire need as they are presently underwater (according to relative sea level) and are only dry due to their extremely good sea defences. In Antarctica there is a ice sheet which is hanging in the balance and is swiftly melting as we speak. The size of this sheet is so large that if it broke and shattered into the ocean it could raise the sea level by almost 0.3m overnight. Now is might not seem much but it can almost certainly destory sea defences world wide (see link below). Its a real phenomenon and needs to be seriously investigated Hope this answers your question!

Answer 4

Zahbudar gives a very good explanation. There is one more thing to consider.

Water does in fact expand when it freezes but it also expands when it heats up. It is at its least volume at about 4 degrees C or 4 degrees above freezing. So when the oceans of world warm up they expand and rise even without having extra melt-water added to them.

Answer 5

Imagine both poles of the Earth melted. Try getting a water pot and measure the volume of the water. Then put one metre of Ice in the middle. After that, put it in the temp. of 100F. After the Ice melts, measure the volume. Imagine that happened to by all the poles of the Earth to the Earth? By the way, water contract not expand when becomin' Ice!

Answer 6

Melting ice-caps + shrinking Glaciers = sea-level rises.
Tundra defrosting + fresh water running off into the oceans = Sea-levels rising.

Answer 7

The melting appears to be taking place the real question is why. The environmentalist want u to think that CO2 has increased 30% but go measure it ,it is not there,and if u cant find the CO2 there is no global warming. Where is the CO2 it is hiding in the good friends the green plants,they take in CO2 and put out oxygen.

Answer 8

the thing is we are not talking in terms of icebergs but rather icecaps and glaciers.thats a hell of a lot of water running into the oceans,chances are somebody is going to get their feet wet